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adequate to produce the result ? Or must other agencies have 
contributed to it, and among them the direct intervention of 
God? 
63. There is, unquestionably, a tendency among religious 
men to charge every theory of creation by evolution with 
pantheistic and atheistic tendencies. This would be just, if 
it were a necessary part of such theories, that blind forces and 
laws are able to produce this result independently of the power 
and intelligence of a personal God. But where I ask, is the 
Pantheism and Atheism, if we assume that the Creator has 
followed a definite order and law in His creative acts, and has 
carried them on, as He does all the acts of His providence, by 
the use of means ? Or if, instead of causing the first pro- 
genitors of a species to spring up from the ground, He has 
produced them out of beings previously in existence ? Our 
present knowledge is very inadequate to determine how creation 
has been effected. This is a strong reason why we should 
avoid prematurely dogmatizing; but, certainly, none why we 
should not make it the subject of careful study. 
64. There are not wanting indications that in the formation 
of the universe the Creator has acted through the agency of 
means, and not by that which we designate direct action. 
Of this the evidence is considerable. Whether this be an 
entire account of the matter is quite another question. Still 
more clear is it that His creative acts have followed a sequence 
and order, and been constituted on a general plan. This latter 
point must be admitted even by those who refuse to admit the 
theory of creation by evolution. We might have hoped that 
the general acquiescence in the well-known illustration of 
Paley’s watch, would have been a sufficient safeguard against 
wholesale denunciations of those who hold this theory as if it 
were destructive of Theism. As he observes, if a watch could 
be so constructed as to produce another watch by its mechanism, 
and should thus go on producing a succession of watches, each 
possessed of the power of self-reparation, we should feel the 
most profound admiration for the skill of the artist. Nor 
would it be diminished, if the mechanism could construct a 
first-rate chronometer ; and this a succession of still more 
perfect instruments. The only point in which such a theory 
can be either pantheistic or atheistic is when it is assumed 
that such harmonies can have resulted from the action of blind 
forces, without the intervention of intelligence. 
65. Still more remarkable is it that such a theory should be 
suspected of pantheistic or atheistic tendencies, when we 
reflect that the mode in which God has created every individual 
